James Fenimore Cooper was a prolific and popular American writer of the first half of the 19th century. His historical romances of frontier and Indian life in the early American days created a unique form of American literature. Wyandotte is set in New York state during the American Revolution. The main character of the novel is an Indian, "Saucy Nick", also called Wyandotte ("Great Chief), whose depictions violate stereo types of Native Americans. The novel Wyandotte arrived at a time when a patriotic mythology about the American Revolution was developing, and Cooper's somber tale of the sufferings of an isolated family in upstate New York during the Revolution was not congruent with the celebratory stories then being told.